No Test for the Wicked: A Lexi Carmichael Mystery, Book Five (12 page)

The computer was on and the screen saver was in play. I reached up and tapped the space bar when I heard a noise in the hallway.

I clicked the monitor off and scooted under the teacher’s desk, hugging my knees to my chest. The door to the Weather Lab opened and footsteps stealthily approached my location. Elvis had been right. I should have waited.

I felt like throwing up. If whoever it was noticed me, I’d be toast. My legs started to shake and I squeezed my knees so hard my knuckles turned white. The footsteps stopped near the desk. Blood roared in my ears.

The footsteps moved on and black-clad legs came into view. The figure crouched down by the window and I saw it was a man with a dark ski mask. He had a long gun strapped to his body with a diagonal belt. He held another gun in one hand and wore a bulky vest. He was a mere two feet from me. If he turned counterclockwise a half turn he’d see me huddled there. I couldn’t believe it. My life hung on a turn.

I didn’t breathe or move for fear of catching his eye. Instead I closed my eyes and wished I knew an appropriate prayer.

A crash sounded, causing me to startle. I glanced up as the blinds over the window rattled and closed. Once they were down, the man turned away from the desk. He hadn’t seen me. His footsteps slapped across the floor. The door to the classroom opened and then clicked shut.

I stayed crouched under the desk for a full minute, gulping deep breaths and hugging my knees to my chest, trying to stop my entire body from shuddering.

“Lexi?” Elvis whispered frantically.

“I’m okay.” I took several more breaths and tried to steady my shaking hands. “Oh, crap. That was way too close for comfort.”

I crawled out from beneath the desk and came to a crouch in front of the computer. My teeth were chattering. “One of the terrorists just closed the blinds, presumably to limit the view of the snipers and police. I managed to hide under the teacher’s desk. I don’t think he saw me.”

“Thank God. Come back here.”

“In a minute. I haven’t had a chance to get a look at the system. I’m not wasting the trip.”

I turned on the monitor and my fingers tapped the keyboard. It took me under thirty seconds to navigate to the back door I’d set up, slide into the system and take a look around.

“Hurry,” Elvis whispered.

“I am hurrying, but I have to be careful.”

I checked out a few things before crawling back to Elvis. My hands were still shaking. Badass, I was not.

I slid in across from Elvis and he gave me an awkward hug with the laptop squished between us.

“Jesus H. Christ. I have never been so scared in all of my life.”

“What about in the closet an hour or so ago?”

He shook his head. “No, that wasn’t as bad. At least we were together. This time, I didn’t know what was happening to you.”

“I’m alive. That’s all that matters at this point.”

“Truth to the ultimate degree.”

I pressed a hand to my throat. “If he had turned even a micro inch to his left, he would have seen me. But he didn’t and I’m still here. Holy cow.”

He put his hand on my trembling one and squeezed. “Good. That’s good. Breathe in. Breathe out. We’re going to make it.”

His steadiness comforted me. “Yes, you’re right. We’ve got this.”

“I just hope your trip was worth it. What did you see?”

“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

He exhaled. “The way things are going I’d rather have the bad up front.”

“Okay. The bad news is they’ve already got internal monitoring software set up. Which means Jouret, if he remains the one working out of Computer Central, would peg us if we tried to do anything on any of the computers in the school. We’re also isolated from the Internet connection, as expected. We won’t be able to check the Internet to figure out what to do if surrounded by deranged terrorists in a high school.”

“Bummer.”

“My thoughts exactly. Needless to say, at this point there’s no way we can contact the police so we can tell them what’s going on in here.”

“Do we even
know
what’s going on?”

“Not really, but we will, right?”

“Right. What else?”

“Well, Jouret has been a busy boy. I noted several heavily encrypted communications going in and out. He’s already talking with someone, but I don’t think it’s the police.”

“Agreed.”

“He’s also changed all the passwords and locked everyone out internally. I can’t say I didn’t expect that.”

“Me neither. It makes our work more difficult, but not impossible.”

“Especially since we have a back door. We just have to figure out how to access it without being noticed. Plus, nothing technical is ever impossible for you, Elvis.”

“Appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“You’re welcome. Now for the good news.”

“Well, the bad news wasn’t as bad as I expected. But any good news is welcome given our current situation.”

I managed a smile. “Well, the good news is that Jouret is the only person in the school logged in to the system right now.”

“How is that good?

“Because of the way he’s logged in.”

“Which is?”

“Through his own school account.”

Elvis waited a beat. “There
is
more to this good news, right?”

“Of course. Here’s the good news. He’s logged in via his office as well as Computer Central.”

A slow smile spread across his face. “I see where you’re going with this. If we presume, which we should, that Jouret is working out of Computer Central, then it’s logical to assume his office is empty. If we can get there, we can slip into the system right through his own account and see what he’s up to without setting off any alarms.”

“Yes. Except...there are two problems. One, I don’t know where Jouret’s office is. Second, we’re in a school full of terrorists. We can’t just roam around and ask someone where it is.”

“Those are definitely problems.”

The laptop dinged and I bumped my head on the top of the cabinet. I had become seriously jumpy.

Elvis opened it and checked. “Password bypassed. We’re in. More luck coming our way. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I expected to get in. Let’s see what we have here.”

I started to shift so I could see the screen when I heard a noise at the door. He quietly closed the laptop and put a finger on his lips. The cabinet went dark and we both stilled.

Then the door opened and I heard the soft chatter of voices in a language I didn’t recognize.

Elvis leaned forward, pressing his mouth to my ear. “
Urdu
,” he breathed.

Urdu? I racked my brain to try and remember what country had Urdu as a national language. I stopped when I heard them start pulling things out of the cabinets.

Oh, God, I bet they were looking for the missing laptop. In a matter of moments, they would find it and peel it from Elvis’s dead hands.

I couldn’t see him, but I could hear his calm, steady breathing. He didn’t seem overly panicked, just calmly waiting, as if he faced down crazed terrorists every day.

His quiet confidence comforted me. I held my breath and mathematically calculated how far away the searchers were based on their noise and movement. I tried to slow my breathing and think.

No question they’d be shocked to see us, and furious when they discovered the laptop. Unfortunately, no matter which way I considered it, the odds they would shoot first and ask questions later remained at ninety-nine point nine percent.

My eyes locked onto Elvis’s.

It sounded like they were at the next cabinet over. If I calculated correctly, that meant my life would probably end in about ten seconds.

Nine
,
eight
,
seven
,
six
,
five
,
four...

I couldn’t breathe. My heart pounded so hard I was certain whoever was standing less than two feet away could hear it. Elvis reached out and linked his fingers with mine.

Knock
,
knock.

I stiffened, glancing at Elvis. He frowned. The searchers exchanged hushed words directly in front of our cabinet and then their footsteps moved toward the door. More whispers, and then the door opened and closed with a slam. We listened for a several minutes without hearing anything before I whispered to Elvis.

“What the heck was that?”

“A knock.”

“I know it was a knock,” I hissed. “But what kind of terrorists knock?”

“No idea
.
”

“You said they were speaking Urdu.”

“Yes.”

“Before I express my enormous surprise that you speak Urdu, please tell me in which country they speak the language.”

“Countries.” Elvis exhaled heavily. Despite his calm façade, he must have been as nervous as me. “Urdu is spoken mostly among the Muslim communities in Pakistan and India in the region of Hindustan. Both countries list Urdu as a national language, along with English and numerous other dialects. I don’t speak Urdu by any stretch of the imagination, but Xavier and I worked in India for three months about a year and a half ago on a project for our company. I recognize the language and a few of the words.”

“Pakistan and India?”

“Yes. There are numerous al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in both countries. We found Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.”

“So which ones are they? Pakistani or Indian?”

Elvis shrugged. “No idea. It’s not like I can ask for clarification.”

“True. Now what?”

“Now, we move to one of the cabinets they’ve already searched.”

“How about leaving this classroom entirely? I’d rather not be here when they come back.”

“I wish we could, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea. They might still be out in the hallway. We don’t know where they are. At the very least, we have to assume they are monitoring the hallways with the security cameras. We’ve got better odds of survival at this point if we plant ourselves where they have already searched and make a new plan.”

As reluctant as I was to stay, I didn’t have a better idea at the moment. “Okay.”

I carefully opened the cabinet and peered out. The room was dim. Since the blinds were closed, the room was shrouded in shadows.

Elvis fell out of the cabinet, groaning as he stretched his cramped legs. We half-crawled and half-crept to the second cabinet in the row, moving carefully around the discarded items on the floor. After one more quick stretch, we climbed into the new cabinet, closing the door behind us.

Elvis immediately opened the laptop. “I’m not waiting any longer. We’ve got to see what’s in here. Hope it was worth it.”

He balanced the laptop on his knees angled the screen toward me so I could see what he was doing. He’d already accessed the hard drive and was looking around.

“Hey, look. It’s that same file you saw on Jouret’s computer.”

“Okay, so now it’s official. The Veiled Knights are somehow connected to this operation.”

“Yes. So, I guess, given our present circumstances, it would be okay to have a crack at it and see what’s in there.”

“Crack away.”

“Music to my ears. But coming from you, they are especially sweet.”

I smiled and he started a new attack against the file. I watched with interest, offering suggestions here and there. Eventually, we came to a point where we could do nothing but wait and let the software do its work.

I must have fallen asleep because at some point, Elvis nudged me on the shoulder. “Lexi. We’re in.”

I blinked and rubbed my eyes, squinting at the glow of the screen. “Fantastic. How long was I out?”

“Nearly two hours. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything.”

“Two hours? Really? Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I was busy and no terrorists came back. I thought it best that one of us got some rest.”

“Jeez, I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what happened to me.”

“You were exhausted, not to mention traumatized. You shut down. It’s okay. I managed without you. The file buckled.”

“Under your very precise ministrations.”

He grinned. “Well, the software did most of the work. But I gave it a little help, of course.”

“Of course.” I smiled and tapped the screen. “Open that document first.”

Elvis opened it. “It’s in Urdu.”

“You don’t happen to have an Urdu translating software on that thumb drive.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Drat. Okay, try that one.”

He clicked on it. “It’s a news article in English, thank God.”

I leaned closer. “About what?”

“Politics in Pakistan.”

“Angle it this way so I can read it, too.”

We both read the article silently. When I was done, I leaned my head back against the cabinet.

“We’re in big trouble, Elvis.”

“Why?”

“See where the article is talking about these factions—the
Mehsuds
and the
Shahids
? Well, I may have had an up-close encounter with one of them.”

“What?”

I quickly brought him up to date on my run-in with Ansari Zogby and the bomb-making equipment the police found in the apartment he visited.

Elvis whistled softly. “Well, at least we know where the bombs are now.”

“Great. What are we going to do?”

He looked back at the article. “We have to figure out their end game and work backward.”

“How are we going to do that? I know squat about warring factions in Pakistan. What does any of that have to do with a high school in D.C.?”

“Let’s try to break it down logically. According to this article, there are two major Taliban factions at war with the government in Pakistan. One faction, the
Mehsuds
, have been the most powerful anti-government force in the area. But when a drone strike killed their leader back in 2009, there was a struggle over who would take charge. A splinter group called
Shahid
split from the
Mehsuds
and tried to take control of the group’s activities and the money. There’s been a lot of infighting. Now there’s real trouble because the Pakistani prime minister recently invited the
Mehsuds
to the table to negotiate peace and possible representation in the government.”